Honourable Chairperson;
Honourable Members;
Acting DG of the DSI;
Heads of the DSTI entities; and
Officials from DSTI and entities:
Thank you for this opportunity to once again present to the Portfolio Committee. As Minister and as the Department, we always value the opportunity to the brief the Committee on our work.
The global and national environment
The Strategic Plans and Annual Performance Plans (APPs) of the DSTI and entities are presented against the background of major pressures on South Africa. These pressures have arisen from a multiplicity of sources in recent decades - deep structural changes in the global economy, growing impact of disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, robotics and automation on labour markets and work, and the increasingly damaging impact of climate change and biodiversity losses.
The challenges facing our National System of Innovation
Informed by this understanding, we need to invest in groundbreaking innovations, especially those with the greatest promise of creating new jobs and sources of livelihood and also use these capabilities to enable the building a capable, ethical developmental State.
It is for this reason that our department’s newly adopted of mantra of Placing Science, Technology, and Innovation at the centre of Government, Education, Society, and Industry – will serve as our compass for the next five to ten years.
We further recognise that urgent work needs to be done to deepen and diversify the networks linking our NSI to crucial industries such as manufacturing, mining, and agriculture.
As much as the size of our NSI is too small to make a major impact on the economy, a lot of ground-breaking innovations coming out of the system are impactful to contribute into building a capable state.
We need to significantly increase our gross investment in research, development, and innovation (RDI). In 2022/23 it stood at 0.61% of GDP, which is woefully inadequate, and the declining levels of private sector investments in RDI needs to be rolled back.
Despite commendable advances in social transformation of the National System of Innovation (NSI), it does concern me deeply me that there we still lack sufficient numbers of black and women scientists and science leaders in key areas of the NSI. This is exactly why we recently hosted our inaugural Summit on the transformation of our NSI.
Our strategic priorities over the next five to ten years
Therefore, over the next five to ten years, we will seek to better align the innovation landscape to national efforts by Government to tackling our most pressing challenges. We have done this before during the COVID-19 crisis and we can do it for the new set of challenges.
We will work across the government system to forge more effective strategic partnerships with key STI-intensive departments, agencies, and our State-owned Enterprises to drive large-scale innovations that can lower the cost of living and business and stimulate inclusive growth.
In fact, we have already engaged the Departments of Basic and Higher Education as part of this approach. Similarly, we will also energise the scale and diversity of Public-Private sector partnerships with high prospects of innovation-led growth.
At a policy coordination level, we will focus on effective ways of fully harnessing the leverage of critical agenda-setting instruments, most notably, the STI Presidential Plenary, Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) and other joined-up structures to reset STI as a critical investment and strategic priority across key sectors of the economy and society.
We will continue our focus on ensuring greater coherence and impact of existing interventions by continuing with targeted research and the development of technologies in key economic sectors such as energy, agriculture, mining, health, and the circular and digital economies and placing a special focus on such areas as artificial intelligence.
We will continue with our efforts to support government’s efforts to develop credible pandemic preparedness capacity for our country, by among others supporting efforts to build local vaccine manufacturing capacity.
Using our strong capabilities in Space Science, we will continue to support our municipalities to be better prepared for and respond more effectively and efficiently to natural disasters such as flood.
We will continue our focus on upgrading and developing new science infrastructure and the production of critical and high-end skills through among others, the Presidential PhD Programme (PPhDP).
In this respect, the DSTI is working closely with the NRF to run the programme, and we have already engaged some international partners who have agreed to work with us on supporting the PPhDP.
This will also be supported by the implementation of the recommendations of the recently held Inaugural Summit on the Transformation of South Africa’s NSI.
In view of the constraint fiscal environment, we will continue to mobilise additional funding and resources to implement our key programmes and interventions and to use existing funding and resources innovatively.
TIA governance matters
As you may be aware, as Minister, I have a legal obligation to ensure that all the entities reporting our department do not just observe good governance, but also that they are able to fulfil their mandate in a manner that responds to the priorities of the DSTI and government, broadly.
For several years, our entity the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) was experiencing sustained governance instability. This had a deleterious impact on the performance of the TIA, the delivery of its key programmes and staff morale.
On more than one occasion, I took the initiative as Minister to formally raise my serious concerns with the TIA Board and former Chairperson of the Board. The specific concerns I raised with both the Board and the Chairperson, include, the failure to appointment a permanent Chief Executive Officer, high staff turnover, the worrying complaints by staff and innovators that reach my office after losing hope on TIA to resolve mechanisms, audit status of TIA and the delays in finalising the TIA 2.0 Strategy.
After numerous engagements with both the Board and Chairperson, and after considering a number of factors, including the relevant provisions of the TIA Act, the independent reviews done on TIA and the need to ensure that we create leadership stability at the Technology Innovation Agency and to ensure that TIA is enabled to perform optimally and fulfils its mandate as allocated to it by the Act, I took a decision to remove the former Chairperson of the TIA Board after her admittance of contravening the TIA act.
After conclusion of this process, on 20 December 2024, as expected of me, I informed Parliament through in writing through the Speaker of the National Assembly (NA) and the Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) of the appointment of the new Chairperson of the Technology Innovation Agency Board in terms of the Technology Innovation Agency Act, 2008 (Act No. 26 of 2008).
The announcement was tabled accordingly on 12 February 2025. I must also indicate to the PC that we have learned that the former chairperson is taking a legal action against me for the decision remove her and a case has been registered in this regard. Through the department, I am willing and will defend my decision to remove her at the appointed time in a court of law.
Finally, informed by the emerging and unprecedented geopolitical shifts and in line with our commitment to building a just world, we will also use our country’s G20 Presidency to strengthen strategic partnerships on the African continent within the context of the AU’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Strategy (STISA) and continue to promote South-to South cooperation.
In conclusion, today’s presentations from DSTI, NACI, NRF & TIA will seek to give Members a broad assessment of the performance highlights of our department and its entities, for the 2025/26 financial year, with specific reference to key goals and performance targets, weaknesses, corrective measures. And of course, the detail of how we plan to respond to government’s Medium Term Development Plan, over the next 5 years. With your permission Chairperson, I now wish to hand over to the acting Director-General, Ms Gugu Zwane to lead the presentations.
